BED AND BOARD Movie Review

Domicile Conjugal

The fourth film (the third feature) in François Truffaut's semi-autobiographical Antoine Doinel cycle finds Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) right on schedule; he's a bourgeois husband and new father who's feeling trapped and having an affair that he doesn't even seem to really want. Though Antoine seems on first glance to be light years from the grim, juvenile delinquent driven to the brink of catastrophe in The 400 Blows, he endearingly reveals himself to be exactly the same kid in a slightly bigger body; still juvenile, still delinquent, and still flirting with disaster—though in grown-up-speak it's called a mid-life crisis. Christine (Claude Jade, still as enchanting as she was as Antoine's fiancee in Stolen Kisses) is now Antoine's wife and still adores him, though he does his best to test her with his continual, self-centered whining. Hiroko Berghauer is the object of Antoine's stab at manly freedom, and she's both lovely enough to attract Antoine and smart enough to keep it simple. Bed and Board is often cited as the weakest of the major Antoine Doinel films (Love on the Run being a kind of Reader's Digest condensed Antoine Doinel). It may be that art house audiences find Antoine's dilemmas here less “exotic” than they'd prefer; his travails may also strike a bit too close to home for many of the egomaniacal male critics who tend to dismiss the film even while they squirm uncomfortably. Bed and Board was photographed with characteristic aplomb by Nestor Almendros.

NEXT STOP … The 400 Blows, Love at Twenty, Stolen Kisses, Love on the Run

1970 100m/C Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claude Jade, Barbara Laage, Daniel Ceccaldi, Daniel Boulanger, Pierre Maguelon, Jacques Jouanneau, Jacques Rispal, Jacques Robiolles, Pierre Fabre, Billy Kearns, Hiroko Berghauer, Daniele Girard, Claire Duhamel, Sylvana Blasi, Claude Vega, Christian de Tiliere, Annick Asty, Marianne Piketi, Guy Pierauld, Marie Dedieu, Marie Irakane, Yvon Lec, Ernest Menzer, Christophe Vesque; D: Francois Truffaut; W: Francois Truffaut, Bernard Revon, Claude de Givray; C: Nestor Almendros; M: Antoine Duhamel. NYR